Wrapping up a three-day visit to China, the Russian Prime Minister said both Moscow and Beijing can increase the use of their own national currencies in trade deals.

“In principle, we are not against selling our energy resources to China for Russian roubles. But that means our Chinese partners need to get those roubles somewhere. We are ready to pay for Chinese goods in yuan, but we need a balance here,” Putin said.

“This issue has to be studied by experts. We’re planning to have a meeting of finance ministers and central bank heads in Kazakhstan within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to discuss these sorts of questions,” he added.

The whole dedollarization issue came into focus after a report in the UK’s Independent newspaper, which claimed Russia, China, Brazil, China, Japan and the Gulf States are planning to stop using the dollar in oil trading.